Genuine Actress Flirts With Stardom

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: January 24, 2010

IF you were to choose one article of clothing to represent Laura Linney, it would have to be the little black dress. Simple, elegant, appropriate for any occasion. Add a white pilgrim's bonnet and a long apron, and Ms. Linney is transformed into the nobly suffering Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller's ''Crucible.'' Dress it up with pearls, a slash of red lipstick and Manolos, and she is a high-strung Upper East Side wife in the 2007 film ''The Nanny Diaries.'' Include a scarf, a camera bag and a crutch, and she becomes Sarah Goodwin, the recuperating war photographer in Donald Margulies's new play ''Time Stands Still,'' opening on Broadway Thursday at the Manhattan Theater Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theater.

Even Ms. Linney's pale scrubbed face, with nearly invisible blond eyebrows and eyelashes, invites one to draw in expressions, as if she has paint-by-numbers features. That shape-shifting quality, along with a puritan's work ethic, enables her to inhabit varied roles with the steadfastness of a rent-control tenant and has frequently brought rapturous reviews. Ben Brantley in The New York Times has called her ''an actress of peerless emotional transparency, capable of conveying a multitude of conflicting feelings through minimal means.''

On screen she has more than held her own with megawatt actors like Jim Carrey, Liam Neeson and Sean Penn. Despite more than 30 films, 10 Broadway stints, 3 Oscar nominations and an Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning performance as Abigail Adams in HBO's lavish 2008 mini-series ''John Adams,'' Ms. Linney, who turns 46 next month, has not managed to leap into the movie-star stratosphere that her talent, intelligence and looks would indicate. She remains a sort of Everywoman's Meryl Streep.

''She's made very smart actor's choices, not great movie-star choices,'' Mr. Margulies said. ''She's one of the best actresses of her generation, and I don't think she's gotten fair credit.''

The two met in 1992 when she auditioned for the supporting role of Grete, a young German journalist, in his play ''Sight Unseen,'' about a soul-searching celebrated artist. He remembered that first tryout. ''We saw several dozen ing?es,'' nearly all with bad German accents and without the necessary spark, he said. ''I was beginning to think, 'I'm going to have to cut the scene.' ''

Ms. Linney's turn came. ''She started reading, and it was one of those fire-and-music moments,'' he said. She got the part. For a Broadway production of ''Sight Unseen'' in 2004, he called Ms. Linney again, this time to play the larger role of the artist's former lover.

Before a recent rehearsal of ''Time Stands Still'' Ms. Linney compared Mr. Margulies's work to Brigadoon, the enchanted Scottish village that appears for a single day every 100 years. ''It reveals itself over time,'' she said.

That gradual process of revelation is what she loves about the theater. ''Every other medium is about throwing it together and praying that it happens,'' she said, her seaside-blue eyes widening and a grin breaking out across her face. ''With the theater it's a slow cooker.'' When she smiles, tiny quotation marks appear like dimples on either side of her mouth, as if to emphasize her joy.

Ms. Linney, the daughter of the playwright Romulus Linney, grew up around the theater, and a bare rehearsal studio is one of her favorite places to be. ''I'm profoundly lucky,'' she said. ''I really like it. I really like my work. I've liked it since I was 5 years old.''

Her parents divorced while she was an infant, but she maintained a close relationship with her father. Despite the family legacy, however, she has never felt entitled to a place onstage, saying that the label of actress has to be earned.

Perhaps that is why she has thrived on discipline and hard work since attending boarding school in upstate New York. ''All the things that most kids hated, I loved,'' Ms. Linney said. ''I loved that things were asked of me and that, much to my surprise, I was able to do them. I loved the 10 o'clock bedtime. I loved the responsibility.''

The demands turned out to be liberating. ''I was unshackled,'' she said. It was invigorating after her schooling in Manhattan, where ''I sort of didn't fit in,'' she added. ''It just wasn't for me. I was scared all the time.''

She went to Northwestern University but also felt out of place there, so she spent every night in the library, studying to get good enough grades to transfer. She switched to Brown, where she met other aspiring actors like Jeanne Tripplehorn. They have remained good friends.

It was during her senior year that Ms. Linney, for the first and only time, performed in a play written by her father. Unlike Hallie Foote, who has become the premier interpreter of the work of her father, Horton Foote, Ms. Linney has avoided acting in anything written by her parent.

During an interview for ''Inside the Actors Studio'' last year Ms. Linney recalled her decision to appear in that play, Mr. Linney's ''Childe Byron.'' She played Ada, Lord Byron's estranged daughter, who on her deathbed tries to reconcile herself with the memory of her father.